If you’re a beginner or even an experienced Linux user, chances are good that no matter how hard you try, there will always be one Windows program you need. Maybe for work. Business often requires a specific format for documents, and no matter how good it is or how comfortable you are with your own Linux program, you still need a Windows application. So instead of installing Windows along with Linux, you installed Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator), which allows you to run Windows programs from within Linux.
This is a great thing. Unfortunately, this can be more than a little ugly. Your Windows programs definitely don’t use your Linux themes, and worse, they look like they came straight from Windows 95. Blocky, flat, and just plain ugly.
Luckily, Wine can indeed accept MSStyle themes, which means it’s not that hard to make your Windows applications look pretty pretty even if they don’t quite match the rest of your desktop.
The first step, after installing Wine and then your Windows application, which we assume you know if you’re reading this article is to find a theme that you like. A good place to view many of them is on this Deviantart page.
Suppose, for example, that you are using Ambiance, the default Ubuntu theme. This is what a typical window looks like.
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Again, this is Notepad, a basic Windows text editor that runs in Wine.
As you can see, it uses Ubuntu window decorations, but the menus are blocky, the highlight color is wrong it doesn’t match at all. But, if you chose the Ubuntu Light theme for Windows XP, you probably will.
This is a theme designed for Windows users who want to mimic the look and feel of Ubuntu on their Windows PCs, but it will also work for us running Windows applications in Wine.
Go ahead, click on the Download File link and save it to your computer.
When the download is complete, unpack the archive.
Inside the folder is another folder called UbuntuLight. The theme file is located here. To install it, we need to use the Wine Configuration program, which can be found in the Applications menu, under Wine.
Now go to the “Desktop Integration” tab.
Now click the Install Theme button, navigate to the downloaded theme and select it. Once you’ve done that, just select it from the Theme menu.
Now try a new Windows program. Let’s use Notetab again.
Now, all of a sudden, we are closer to our usual Ubuntu style. You can’t fool anyone (menus are different, and some widgets are still firmly established in the Windows world), but close. Install closer fonts (again on the Desktop Integration tab of the Wine configuration) and you will feel right at home.
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